It's an annual tradition, and it says so right in the name -- yearbook.

Few objects are cherished as much as a high school yearbook. As Mastercard might say, the memories they contain are priceless. Maybe it was the year the football team won the championship. Perhaps the band played a concert that blew away the competition. Maybe this was the year you got your first car.

But that's the problem. The memories are personal, and few people think to share them with the public. Nobody wants to part with their yearbook, but the books are more than keepsakes.

Yearbooks also have precious information tucked inside their pages.

"Yearbooks are used heavily for genealogy research," said Hampton librarian Gaynell Drummond. "They're important for keeping records of the city and town during a period of time, and its information is fairly easy to verify."

Genealogical research is a popular hobby now that it is easier than ever to discover ancestors with Internet resources such as the United States Census and Ancestry.com. Yearbooks are an important piece of that puzzle.

"Yearbooks help put flesh on the skeleton of your pedigree chart," Drummond said. "People come in to find a picture of a grandparent or great-grandparent."

Instead of just finding a name, researchers can find pictures, and find out if their relative was on the football team or was an academic standout. "You say, oh, that's where I get my broad shoulders or math skills from," Drummond said.

Unfortunately, these resources are in short supply at the Hampton Public Library.

Drummond helps run the Virginiana Room at the main branch. The room holds thousands of records, such as ship's passenger logs dating back to the 18th century and antique maps of the city.

Yearbooks are plentiful, but the collections are incomplete. It used to be that the library would receive a donated book from each of the area's high schools, Drummond said. But sometimes the school would forget to send one, or, more recently, tighter budgets have made it difficult to justify a $60 yearbook donation. This has left gaps in the library system's collection.

In the case of Phenix High School, the gap is decades wide.

Phenix High School was an all-black school that opened in 1932 on Hampton University's campus. It closed in 1968.

Drummond has a bond with Phenix. She was a member of the school's last graduating class. The students were close, she said. Most of them went to school with each other their entire lives, and the school supported everyone.

"Everyone had to do well together," she said. "We all supported the feeling that we're going to make it and do well together."

"We didn't accept classmates who were falling behind, because there was a strong bond and camaraderie."

In the library's entire collection, Drummond has only one yearbook from Phenix High School's 36 years of operation -- the 1938 issue.

She doesn't even have her own yearbook from 1968, because she gave it to a reunion committee and hasn't seen it since.

"I know those yearbooks are out there somewhere," she said. "The problem is a lot of the time they're personal treasures, and as a person gets older, they hold all of their things tighter than when they were younger because these memories keep them going."

She worries, however, that these books are being destroyed.

"(Seniors) are passing on, and when your family finds these old books on the shelf, they don't know what to do with them, so they throw them away."

But instead of going in the trash, Drummond has spearheaded a donation project, which she said she hopes will complete the library's collection.

"If you have a yearbook in your attic or closet, donate it to the library," she said. "We don't care about the condition. Autographs might be a great addition to the book."

Donations will be added to the historical collection, Drummond said.

"These will give a much fuller and accurate history of Hampton, and that must involve all of the members of our community," she said. "We're starting to move in a different type of historic appreciation, and the yearbooks are a real value to people, no matter how good or bad they are." *

WANT TO HELP?

The historical collection at the main branch of the Hampton Library needs your yearbooks, class pictures and school mementos. Help the library complete its collection. The years listed below are particularly needed; the book and materials may be in any condition, and copies also will be considered.

Contact Gaynell Drummond at the main branch of the Hampton Public Library at 727-1314.